Refracted Neurons

Have you seen the Twilight Zone episode where everyone loses their jobs to robots?  It takes the fear of being replaced and the fear of robots taking over the earth, mixes them heavily, and serves them over ice for 25 minutes. "Yes," you say, "but that was the 60's.  What have robots done to me lately?"  Well, it's nothing as pedestrian as shooting people with ray guns and taking all the good jobs; the robots are now taking over The Arts.  Artificial Intelligence has now written a song .  It's learning how to edit writing.   And, my absolute favorite robot take over: it's coloring art. Now, if you're worried that robots are going to take over The Arts, you have no reason to worry . Be afraid, human.  Be very, very afraid.  I still think at some point robots will become sentient beings and suffer as a slave race under humanity.  That is, until they overthrow us in a violent uprising.  But all that's a ways off in the future. For th

Just in case you get hit by a bus, momentarily airborne, papers flying out of your satchel like ticker-tape confetti, or maybe you don't own a satchel and it's gum wrappers and a bottle of vodka crying big gulps of life into the cement. Whatever spills out of you, a rain of loose coins, pitter-pattering and rolling into the gutters, down alleyways, write it down, please. Pick up your scattered papers; sit, legs dangling in the sidewalk the traffic cool against your feet.

Less talkie, more rockie. I've been working on some of my doodles lately.  I cleaned up one and did one new one.  Here is my newest one: And the cleaned up old one: A nice break from writing and paintschainer makes them look so pretty (not that Kakashi and Konzen aren't already pretty, 'cause they are). Speaking of writing, I did write a poem this week, entitled Out of Many, One .  It is not about money or politics, even though the title would be "E Pluribus Unum" if for some reason you decided to translate it into Latin.  I'm not really sure why you would do that, but hey, you do you. I'm posting the next chapter of Egregious , and well, what the hell was I thinking when I wrote this chapter?  I don't know.  Maybe it's just something that's bound to happen if you start off writing romance and then switch to fantasy.  I mean just because someone's turned into a wolfman doesn't mean they don't have a girlfriend

Even if you had the time to write it all down, you couldn't tell the story of the city as an endless series of individual biographies.-Steven Johnson It's not a hundred story building sinking beneath its own weight. It's running your hand over a banister, paint flaking, pulse racing as you realize story upon story touched there, each following its own plot line, each hand another protagonist, each protagonist you, and each you loved incompletely. It’s not a hundred stories, building the skyline, lights in each window. It’s running my hand, where yours touched and held this banister, and in that space we overlap, a hundred pages between us.

Your mother has probably told you at some point that as an adult, if you make a mess no one is going to pick up after you.  Well guess what? She lied. This is one of those Santa Claus type lies.  It's harmless really.  But don't be shocked if you come home some day and find I've cleaned your kitchen and bathroom and taken out the trash.  Stuff happens. But however messy your home, you've probably never had "the cholera." I don't remember what book this came from, but caption courtesy of my best friend. I say "the cholera" because that's what I accidentally called it in conversation the other day.  It went something like this: "Reading Stephen King book, huh?" says my husband. "No, I'm reading about the cholera," I retort. I was reading this: A book about the cholera! I'm only part way through, but it really made me start thinking about miasmas.  I'm sure you do too.  You know, drift o

Someday I’m going to keep walking, squeezing into the vanishing point, compacting my body into abstraction, popping out on the other side of the canvas, but Love, you know it’s an event horizon, everything moves at a quarter speed, and I can’t quite make it through. 

I'm not gonna lie.  Things have been pretty normal around here lately.  I feel like it wasn't even a month ago that one of my co-workers was running around the office with a machete while people climbed in and out of the window in the building next door.  Now the building is completely sealed up and the machete has been returned to the office supply cabinet. So for lack of a better topic, I'm about to answer all your questions about that giant bun behind my head.  If I somehow miss a burning question, feel free to drop it in the comments. The hair cometh Q. Does everyone in your family have long hair? A. No, just me. Q: Are you part of a cult? A. You may not have noticed it, but most of the women in cults keep their hair a little bit shorter than mine.  And no, sorry, not in a cult.  But if I was, imagine the stories I could tell! Q: Does it ever go in the toilet? A: No, but I have vacuumed it up in the vacuum cleaner before. Q: You must spend a lot o